Courtesy of the BRILL GALLERY
"Acid sign" by Leonard Freed. All Rights Reserved.

MIDDLEFIELD -- Forty one years ago this weekend, nearly 30,000 young people converged along the slopes of Powder Ridge hoping to hear music and be part of human peace and interaction.

Mimicking Woodstock, the three-day music festival cost just $20 and was supposed to include performances by Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin, The Allman Brothers, Van Morrison and Jethro Tull to name a few, but it was cancelled two days prior to starting thanks to a court injunction filed by the planning and zoning commission at the time.

The fear was that the crowd was too large and the hoards of people might devastate the area and overwhelm facilities. The State's Attorney at the time, Vincent Scamporino, was charged with enforcing Judge J. Palmer's injunction to stop the festival, but as people kept arriving -- passing by the "P. Ridge Fest. Prohibited" signs that lined the highways into town -- the main concern became maintaining some form of order and safety.

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The whirlwind weekend full of 70s' free-spirited nakedness and drugs has been acknowledged by historical talks and gatherings in the past, including one at Peckham Park last year, but it is now being documented at The Brill Gallery in North Adams, Mass., thanks to photographer Leonard Freed, who attended the festival and got a first-hand glimpse at what unfolded.

Freed, who died in 2006, attended the festival because he had been in Amsterdam during '68 and missed Woodstock. Powder Ridge was his chance to experience what he had missed in New York, said Ralph Brill, owner of the gallery that represents the Freed estate.

"He was one of the only photographers who documented the event," Brill said. "He was able to capture these nuances and behaviors of young people at the time."

Freed's nearly 30 pictures exhibit young people with signs for LSD and acid for $1, people cooling off in a property pond that posted a sign "Don't swim in this pond! Because it's diseased," American flags draped over tents, VW buses and cars that people slept in and hitchhikers lining the guardrails on Rote 66 near Guida's.

"It was cancelled two days before, but basically people went anyways because they were committed, some were hitchhiking," Brill said.

Many young people had no idea the festival wasn't going on until they reached the highway into town, he said. One of those hitchhikers was retired state police officer Sgt. Jerry Longo, just 15 at the time, who walked from East Hartford with his brother to attend the event.

"We didn't know anything about it being cancelled," Longo said. "All we knew was that everyone was going. We got to the road, saw the mess and turned around."

It wasn't the first time Longo and his brother "chickened-out" as he put it. The two had also planned to walk to Woodstock before reaching the New York freeway and turning around, he said.

"I don't regret what we did, but we didn't want to get in trouble," Longo said.

They feared getting arrested would mean the wrath of their father, he said.

"That was before my stint in law enforcement," Longo said.

Longo, who now works as an investigator with the gaming commission, is also the unofficial historian for the department, speaking with many retired and relocated officers who remember the event.

"All the officers that were there just talk about all the weird things they saw," he said. "The state police's role is always to protect and defend; they hauled a lot of kids that were sick."

According to an article in The Middletown Press from Aug. 3, 1970, state police kept the treatment of drug cases off the Powder Ridge grounds, but a medical treatment tent was set up near "Powder Puddle" on the site. A Middlesex Memorial Hospital triage area was also set up at Memorial School. "Crowd medicine" physician William Abruzzi was at the fest as well as clinical psychologist Walter Voight, who was a volunteer doctor that worked to treat young people at the festival.

"Each night, Voight said, they handled between 15 and 25 severe drug reactions, 30-50 cases of moderately severe drug reactions, and 50 to 75 mild reactions," according to the 1970 article. "Their work began on Tuesday night when kids first began arriving in large numbers, and continued through Saturday night, when the crowd began to dissipate."

Another issue was the rapidly contaminated pond people kept swimming in during the heat, health officials said at the time. There were 2,000 medical cases from the polluted water, including hepatitis, skin rashes and dysentery.

Electricity and water were left on during the course of the weekend because officials feared riots and safety concerns if these were turned off. Sound equipment on what was to be the main stage, however, was turned off, prompting many festival-goers to start playing their own music. The only act scheduled to perform that actually made it to the festival was Melanie Safka, who performed with a jerry-rigged sound system from a generator and two Mister Softee ice cream trucks.

Even with all the confusion and traffic delays and jams, the overall concern from area residents at the time was for the young people and their health. Hoses were left out at some houses and residents gave rides to youth. According to a Middletown Press article on Aug. 1, 1970, resident Kaarina Ellis told a reporter she didn't condemn the kids but rather was upset with the promoter Middleton Arts International Inc. for "gypping" the festival-goers from a show. Money was not refunded to the ticketholders who bought from Middleton Arts -- their representatives couldn't be found to reimburse people or to be charged, and a supposed rescheduled concert with the same line-up that was to happen at Yankee Stadium was cancelled.

In the end, the ski area's owners at the time -- Louis and Herman Zemel -- were arrested for violating the court injunction, and people who bought their tickets specifically from the ski area were refunded by them.

Brill said he hopes the current exhibit will help people "reconnect the dots" of the event, he said.

"There are probably lots of 50-60-year-old dentists and lawyers who went there and want to show their kids as part of their own history," he said.

The Leonard Freed Powder Ridge exhibit will be on display at the gallery through the end of the summer. Each Freed photo is signed by him and vintage stamped. The photos can also be purchased and range from $1,800 to $4,000.

The Brill Gallery is located at 243 Union St., North Adams, Mass., and is open Thursday through Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. or by appointment. For more information, call (800) 294-2811 or visit www.brillgallery109.com.

Kelly Ann Gore-Oleksiw can be reached by email at kgoreoleksiw@middletownpress.com. Text MIDNEWS to 22700 to get news alerts directly to your cell phone. Standard messaging and data rates apply.